The Sweet Grapes

One is not sure whether it is a good or bad news. A new Indian Grape Processing Board is set to come into existence in Pune as the central government has approved the proposal. The move is expected to give boost to the wine industry in Maharashtra. According to figures provided by government, the Indian wine industry is worth Rs 275 crores and growing at 25 –30% annually. Maharashtra is the No. 1 state in industry while Nashik is called the Wine Capital of India.

The Board will be an autonomous body facilitated by the Government of India and managed by the industry representatives. An outlay of Rs 5.39 crores has been sanctioned for the establishment of the Board. Pune is the principal grape growing area in the country. The wine industry in Maharashtra leads in the country. According to figures available with Maharashtra government, out of 61 wine industries in India, 58 are from the state. Two industries are located in Karnataka while Andhra has only one. Among these 58 industries, 30 are located in Nashik district while 11 are in Pune. Rest are in Sangli, Solpaur, Buldhana and Usmanabad.

Board is expected to give a new boost to the Indian wine industry, by fostering sustainable development through Research and Development, Extension, Quality control and market research. Just last month, I have given a story of a move by National Horticulture Board to get Geographical Indication for the wine grown in the area of Nashik and Pune. The wine made from grapes cultivated in this area will be called Sahyadri Wine.

However, currently the situation is not ripe with regard to wine industry. As an effect of recession and terror attacks, the demand has plummeted and stocks are piling up.

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Wine production in India (upto Sept. 2008): Two crores 25 lakh litre
Wine production in Maharashtra (upto Sept. 2008) : Two Crores 11 lakh litre
Wine industries in India : 61
Wine industries in Maharashtra : 58
Area under cultivation of grapes (India) : 60,000 Hectares
Area under cultivation of grapes (Maha.): 35,236 Hectares

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Maharashtra government announced its wine policy in October 2001. Thereafter, the industry was given heavy encouragement in the state. Many major steps were taken like:

• To set up wine parks in the state.
• To issue licenses for the wineries at district level.
• To include wineries in the food processing industry sector and removing from the list of country made and foreign made liquor.
• To bring the excise duty on wine from 100 percent to 0 percent.

It has faced wrath for opponents also but it did not deter the government from going ahead. Still, the industry has a long way to go as 98 percent of grapes produced in India used for the eating while in a country like France, 99 of grapes go into wine making.
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Powerless Maharashtra

Government of India has released the year end reviews for various ministries, as is the custom. The report of Power ministry makes an entertaining reading. It gives total capacity of electricity generation at present in the country. But it cleverly avoids mentioning the rising demand for power in country. In every respect!

Indian economy is growing at the rate of 8 percent each year and according to a study by The McKinsey & Company. According to the study, power demand may rise from the present 120 gigawatt (GW) to 315-335 GW by 2017. (1)

But going by the data provided by ministry, (2) during the period from Jan. 08 to Nov. 08, total availability of energy in the country was 625289 MU(kilowatt per hour), as against 601517 MU during the same period last year, representing a growth of about 4%. Note that the growth has taken place compared to last year and it is still way far from satisfying the need of 120 GW. During the period Jan.08 to Nov.08 total energy exchanges in the country were 16918.90 MU.

The condition in Maharashtra is still worse. The state is facing a power shortage of at least 5000 MW. Thanks to slow down and recession, the demand has come down significantly. Even though state energy ministers and chief ministers have repeatedly said that load shedding will be passe in few years. But the situation has worsened so much that the state has to declare power cuts for industries. Just before recession set its feet in India, industrial belts were in Maharashtra were reeling under the ‘staggering day’ formula where they were forced to keep their shops shut for two days. Since July and upto September, big cities in the state were having 8 hours of load shedding while the villages were having 12 hours of load shedding. The same darkness reigns even today also and likely to be in coming days also. That is the prospects for 2009 for Maharashtra.

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References

1. Report in Economic Times

2. PIB

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x ‘Setusamudram’ project which will ‘demolish’ the Ramsetu should be cancelled and Ramsetu should be declared as a National historic property.

x Makbul Fida Hussain should be arrested for painting nude and blasphemous paintings of Hindu deities.

x Anti-faith Bill and Temple Bill, proposed by Maharashtra government which can bring threat to the Hindu Dharma should be abolished.

x Those who denigrate Hindu deities through the medium of advertisements, dramas, pictures, publications, products etc, they should be acted against.

x The temples under Government custody should be handed over to the devotees and stop political interference in them.

x Terrorist Mohammed Afzal who was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court should be hanged immediately.

x To give the Kashmiri Hindus their due respect and rehabitalize them back to Kashmir.

x Pollution increasing project of ‘Dow Chemicals’ should be cancelled and Saint Tukaram Maharaj’s Tapobhumi ‘Bhamchandra Hill’ should be declared as a place of Hindu pilgrimage.

These were some of the resolutions passed on Thursday in a public rally in Pune. The meet organised by Hindu Dharmajagriti Samiti took place at Historic Shaniwar Wada. The recent incidences of Malegaon investigations, Mumbai attack seemed to have no impact on the congregation. Speaking on the occasion, Himani Savarkar, national president of Hindu Mahasabha in her speech, added that, ‘Anyone in this country just wakes up, speaks against The Hindus, does atrocities against them, and we Hindus , we take no action against them. This Government, which keeps on appeasing the muslim community, also does not raise any voice against the atrocities done against Hindus. But henceforth, Hindus will not remain quiet. For this reason, the Kshatratej in Hindus should wake up now.'

‘Jeevan Gaurav’, the lifetime achievement award was bestowed upon Shahir Yogesh for his services towards Hindutva. Bharatacharya S. G. Shevade presented the award. The award comprised of a shawl, sriphal, garland and a certificate

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The Neighbouring Shopowner Needs Protection

Even though unorganised retail is reeling under the pressure of organised retail sector, it needs a strong protection. A code of conduct is necessary for the organised sector so that unorganised retail sector does not get affected. This is the recommendation given by a committee which has submitted its report to the government over the issue.

The findings and recommendations of the report furnished by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) and the follow-up action by the Government were tabled in the Rajya Sabha, the lower house of Parliament of India. The report was tabled by Shri Ashwani Kumar, Minister of State for Industry, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today

Main Findings

In its assesment of the impact on unorganized retailers, the report states that unorganized retailers in the vicinity of organized retailers experienced a decline in their volume of business and profit in the initial years after the entry of large organized retailers. But this adverse impact on sales and profit weakens over time. The report also claims that there was no evidence of a decline in overall employment in the unorganized sector as a result of the entry of organized retailers. It negates ‘some decline in employment’ in the North and West regions saying that it ‘also weakens over time.’

The committee seems not to have been amused by these facts, which it itself has given:

• The rate of closure of unorganized retail shops in gross terms is found to be 4.2 per cent per annum.
• The rate of closure on account of competition from organized retail is at 1.7 per cent per annum.
• Small retailers have been extending more credit to attract and retain customers.
• Only 12 per cent of unorganized retailers have access to institutional credit and 37 per cent felt the need for better access to commercial bank credit.
• The unorganized retail sector is expected to grow at about 10 per cent per annum with sales rising from US$ 309 billion in 2006-07 to US$ 496 billion in 2011-12. At the same time, organized retail which now constitutes a small four per cent of total retail sector is likely to grow at a much faster pace of 45-50 per cent per annum and quadruple its share in total retail trade to 16 per cent by 2011-12.
  

The full report is available here.

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Animals Don't Go Wild...

Pune has too times seen wild animals straying into the resident areas. The year 2008 itself witnessed three such incidents where a leopard, a python and a Spotted Dear were found into the urban areas. That itself created panic as well as curiosity as to how these animals came to stray into the human domains? But there are suspicious factors behind these types of the events. 

Shekhar Nanajkar, president of WILD, an organisation working in the field of conservation of forests and wildlife has come up with the statement to this effect. In his statement, he has said that whenever a wild animal is found in the city’s limits, it is always said that it has come through the forest. But it is always a different case. “Some people keep these animal in captivity, even though it is banned by law. When these animal are found out, there is a motive to turn their status into legal one,” he says.

Just yesterday, a spotted deer was found by two people in the Bavdhan area and was released in the wild. The deer had some minor injuries on its mouth and was given immediate treatment. After administering treatment, the deer was taken in a vehicle and released in the forest area in Khadakwasla. Eight months before that, a leopard was found in a housing colony in Nigdi. It seems that leopard has been spotted in Pune almost each year in the last 10 years. 

Nanajkar says, “Animals are wary of the humans and they will never enter the urban areas. Even in deep forests, they try to avoid the areas where they feel human presence. Even wild animals can get their food in the villages and they have no reason to enter the cities.”

He has even accused that some affluent people are involved in keeping wild animals unlawfully. Villages around Pune and Lonavala are known to be trading centres of wild animals. Forest department turns a Nelson’s eye towards these incidents on the pretext of sghortage of manpower.

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Maharashtra government has finally woken up. It has updated its website and has brought the new chief minister Ashok Chavan in his rightful place. Media reports had earliers pointed out how the official portal of government of Maharashtra was still showing Vilasrao Deshmukh as the chief minister of Maharahstra even five days after the swearing in of Chavan alongwith Chhagan Bhujbal as deputy Chief Minister.  

Websites of state government of Maharashtra are notorious for being obsolete and slow. And that is when they say that the state is ahead in Information and Technology initiatives. I had done a story regarding the manpower crunch in Maharashtra’s IT de-partment. At that time, it was seen 

then that being unable to offer competitive remuneration to IT professionals, it has devised a novel way to find the candidates, that is to hire them from other offices.

State department of Information and Technology had sent a letter to various de-partments to send applications for an appointment on deputation to work on state e-governance project, called as SETU. The applications have been invited from state government and semi-government employees and even from local bodies.   

Even as it is embarked on implementing the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) scheme, which officials have claimed to complete upto January 09, the government is still unable to get enough manpower. That is why it has now invited tenders for procuring the manpower. 

And we are still talking about e-governance!

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Meanwhile, Ashok Chavan has given his private email id (ashokchavanmind@rediffmail.com) for the public to contact him with their grievences. This is a first in India. But the question is, and it has been rightly raised by many in the media, why should a office bearer give his personal email id when he should be supposed to be available on his official id?(chiefminister@maharashtra.gov.in) We are still waiting to get that answer.

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An unimpressive conference

Today there was a press conference of Anand Sharma, the minister of State for External Affairs and Information & Broadcasting. He was here for the Vodafone international marathon, which had its share of controversies. As expected, Sharma was asked several questions on media coverage of Mumbai terror attacks. Starting with a quite lengthy sermon on the achievements of United Progressive Alliance government in New Delhi, he took on all the questions, But could not answer satisfactorily any of the questions. H made usual promises of setting up of a Standing Media Consultative Committee comprising representatives of the Editor's Guild, National Broadcasting Organization and the officials of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. It will be chaired by the Secretary, Information & Broadcasting. He also told of a move to conduct training programmes for print as well as electronic media persons on how to cover crisis events.

But the surprise item was next question. When somebody popped up the question of ‘hoax call’ to Pak president Asif Zardari,  Sharma said he did not know anything on that issue. But in a statement later issued by Press & Information Bureau, he was quoted as, “The issue of hoax call to the President of Pakistan (is as) a gimmick which can not divert attention from the seriousness of the dastardly terror attacks. Government of India has signaled that India has nothing to do with the 'hoax call' business."

The Minister said that the world has in one voice condemned the Mumbai terror attacks and this is bound to put pressure on Pakistan to act and added that India on its part will take all steps that are required to stamp out terrorism. He reiterated that the nation should also come together and speak in one voice against terrorism.

 

Commenting about the role of media in covering Mumbai terror attacks, the Minister said that some television channels had gone overboard in reporting and as a result the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting had to issue notices.

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